The winners of the 35th Age Book of the Year Awards were announced on Friday 22 August at the opening night of the Melbourne Writers' Festival.
The overall winner was American Journeys by Don Watson (Knopf) which was awarded the $20,000 Book of the Year prize, as well as winning the nonfiction award, worth $10,000.
Tim Winton's Breath (Hamish Hamilton) won the $10,000 fiction award and Not Finding Wittgenstein (Giramondo) by J S Harry won the Dinny O'Hearn Poetry prize, also worth $10,000.
The prizes were judged by historian Robyn Annear, biographer Brenda Niall, reviewer Lucy Sussex, Big issue editor Alan Attwood, and poet David McCooey.
Other awards to be announced at the festival are the Australian Centre Cultural Awards: The Peter Blazey Fellowship, to a writer working in the field of life writing, biography or autobiography on August 28 at 5pm in the Festival Club; and the Ned Kelly Awards on August 29 at 7:30pm in the Festival Club.

http://www.booksellerandpublisher.com.au/articles/2008/08/09298/
This article from Thorpe Bowker's Weekly Book Newsletter and Media Extra is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker

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